Methodism in three verses

As an exercise, I tried this morning to set down three verses that I believe are especially important to Methodism. I set a limit of three to force me to try to focus on what I thought were the most important. None of these are unique to Methodism, but I do think these three together at least capture something of the core of what animated Methodism as a movement and helped make it powerful.

Without holiness, no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14)
For it is by grace you have been saved through faith (Ephesians 2:8)
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2)

The first statement reminds us of the central importance of holiness of heart and life to Methodism. John Wesley was convinced of the need for inward and outward holiness long before he came to understand that his sins were forgiven by grace through faith. Holiness was the first, and remained the enduring, aim of Wesley’s spiritual journey. Striving to find a way to holiness based on his own efforts occupied a good decade of his early ministry. Justification by grace through faith was such a radical experience for Wesley because he had spent so much energy trying to justify himself through good works. He was completely convinced that holiness was essential to his ultimate salvation. Remove holiness from Methodism and there is no movement that leads to Methodism in the first place.

The second statement speaks to our conviction that salvation is a gift of God (by grace) that we receive by faith. We cannot earn salvation. We only receive it. This was the realization that warmed John Wesley’s heart and caused Charles Wesley to long for a thousand tongues to sing the praise of Jesus. Without salvation by grace through faith, Methodism remains mired in the grinding misery of the pre-Aldersgate Wesley. (If you want to go deep on this, you can read my 16-part series on John Wesley’s sermon “The Scripture Way of Salvation.”)

The third statement speaks of our belief that grace is freely offered to everyone in all places. The death of Christ was not only effective for a narrow subset of the human race, but it is for everyone. Jesus desires that everyone be saved. This is not quite so controversial an idea today, although you can find plenty of guys on YouTube who are still holding up the banner for TULIP Calvinism. In the era in which Methodism arose and even within early Methodism itself. however, the debate between limited and unlimited atonement was critical. I think some recognition of that needs to be part of my three verses.

Just memorizing these three verses won’t tell you everything there is to know about Methodism, not even close, but I do think that any version of the Christian faith that discards or contradicts one of these three statements is moving significantly away from Methodism and toward something else.

While these three verses to distinguish Methodism from some forms of Christianity — Calvinism, for instance, or many forms of progressive or liberal Christianity — they can be embraced by many other traditions. That is no problem from my point of view. Wesley’s intention was not to create something new, but to recapture something very old. Methodism has never sought to be anything other than old-fashioned scriptural Christianity.

This is my attempt at picking just 3 verses to get at the heart of Methodism. If you were going to try to capture the heart of Methodism with 3 verses, which would you use?

Butchers, hackers, and pastors

Two of the writers who have had a lot of influence on my understanding of the pastoral vocation are Wendell Berry and Eugene Peterson.

Berry does not write much about the church or the work of the pastor, but I find many things he writes about farming and poetry have a lot of resonance for the ways that I think about the work of the pastor. I don’t know if Berry and Peterson were aware of each other’s work, but I hear a lot of overlap in their attentiveness to the local and the particular and their rejection of consumerism and efficiency as the highest goal in the life of an organization.

In his book, The Pastor, Peterson writes about working as a young person in his dad’s butcher shop, where he learned valuable lessons that would inform his later work as a pastor.

“I learned that a beef carcass has a will of its own — it is not just inert mass of meat and gristle and bone but has character and joints, texture and grain. Carving a quarter of beef into roasts and steaks was not a matter of imposing my knife-fortified will on dumb matter but respectfully and reverently entering into the reality of the material.”

Peterson writes that his dad would use the name “hackers” for butchers who ignorantly imposed their will upon the meat. I don’t think you have to look very far in the American church to find congregations that have been subject to hackers in the pulpit. Sometimes, if they are skillful enough, hackers can impose their will so well that the congregation is remade in their image. More often, I suspect, they make a mess of things. At the same time, they grow to resent that the congregation is so resistant to their efforts. There is blood everywhere, and no one is happy with the result.

I am not denying that toxic churches exist. I’ve never personally been a part of one, but I’ve heard the stories and believe them. The existence of such churches, however, should not blind us to a much more common problem in pastoral ministry: We pastors often struggle to respectfully and reverently enter into the reality of the congregation as it exists.

The congregation as it exists is messy and full of sinners. It has a history. It has bad habits. It has dreams and longings that might not match up with the ones in our heads. It does not “get with the program.” It is full of contradictions and impossible expectations. And it is, all the same, the body of Christ.

To pastor well, you have to learn how to separate the gristle and bone from the meat. The key word there is “learn.” You don’t enter a new congregation or pastor a changing congregation with perfect understanding of it. You have to find your way and build up a feel for the strange geography and anatomy of the congregation as it exists right there in front of you. It is slow work and most pastors have to learn how to do it through trial and error.

The task is made all the more difficult because most of the time the we work alone. The apprentice butcher has more experienced and skillful butchers watching over, correcting, and teaching them. Pastors tend to be lone rangers, especially early in their calling. For the novice pastor, it is often difficult to tell the hackers from the masters of the craft when you are looking for mentors and guides, and so we tend to follow the celebrities and self-promoters instead of serving apprenticeship with a master who cares more about the work than building a following.

In short, being a pastor is difficult work and it is easy to make a mess of it. It takes every Christian virtue to do it well. It requires humility and submission to the Holy Spirit. It requires nothing less than dying to ourselves and taking up our cross each day.

What now?

Some words for my Wesleyan evangelical* friends remaining in the United Methodist Church. With General Conference 2024 completed, the question for many of us is “What now?”

The narrative of our progressive and centrist colleagues is and will continue to be joyous and triumphant. Evil has been defeated. Now the church can move forward in unity. The general conference steeped in liberation and progressive theology and practice will be hailed as a new birth for the denomination. Our brothers and sisters feel they have achieved a great victory, and they are very happy.

Those of us who feel more loss than gain in the changes the UMC is undergoing will need to navigate our way a bit like aliens and exiles in a foreign land.

Here are a few of my suggestions for the road ahead, if there is anyone out there who finds them helpful.

Find Some Friends. If you are an evangelical United Methodist, you have a lot of friends who are no longer a part of the denomination. In my conference, men and women who were mentors, advocates, and defenders of my ministry have left to join the Global Methodist Church or take their churches independent. People I would have turned to for advice and fellowship are gone.

Those of us who remain are scattered and largely disconnected. We will need to work to find each other and create networks and ways to connect. Most of us who remained are neither skilled nor motivated by the kind of political organizing that our departed brothers and sisters so tirelessly engaged in. It is just as well since our numbers will mean we will have little influence in positions of power or the vital votes at annual conference.

Even so, friends will be important in the days ahead. Even in places where tolerance is observed, evangelicals will be marginalized. Progressive and liberation theology will be normative. We will need to talk together, pray together, and encourage each other. We should never retreat to an enclave or gather in opposition to the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ, but we will need friends now that we no longer have influence.

Figure Out Your Theology. This is something you have probably already done, but it will take discernment in this new UMC to know where we can say “amen” and where we cannot. If we wish to preserve and nurture the Wesleyan evangelical tradition within the United Methodist Church, we will need to be clear about what that tradition is and how to communicate it in our churches and our culture.

To maintain these kinds of conversations, we will have to reach across denominational lines. Many of the best sources of thinking, scholarship, and contemporary preaching in the Wesleyan tradition are not in the United Methodist Church. Evangelicalism has always tended to cross denominational lines, and we will need to embrace this tradition to keep our theological reflection and application robust.

Follow Jesus Christ. The good news in all of this is that our call remains unchanged. We are called to serve Jesus Christ. We are called to save souls. We are called to love people. We are called to confess our sins, receive the pardon of Jesus Christ, and work out our salvation in cooperation with the work of the Holy Spirit within us. That has not changed and will not change.

We are called to carry on in the tradition set in motion by John and Charles Wesley to proclaim a gospel of holiness of heart and life, of redemption purchased by the blood of Jesus, of new birth and sanctification by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are called to proclaim a gospel of grace offered freely to all who repent of their sins and humbly seek forgiveness and pardon.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had conversations with pastors who feel alone, outcast, vilified, and unwanted by the UMC. I understand where those feelings are coming from, but Jesus never said we would be popular or even welcome. He just told us to be faithful.

Some of you might feel you can no longer do that in the UMC. Some of you might feel after hearing Bishop Bickerton preach in Charlotte that you are no longer welcome. That is understandable. As I tell people at every church I have served, the most important thing in your life is to know and serve Jesus Christ. If you can’t do that where you are right now, then by all means find a place where you can.

Over the last several years, I’ve wrestled a lot with what Jesus wants me to do. I’ve prayed quite a bit for clarity about whether he still wants me in the UMC, especially when there were people actively trying to keep me out. I prayed that before disaffiliation. I prayed that during disaffiliation. And I have prayed that in the last couple of weeks. He has told me that this is where he put me and I am not released from that call. So, obviously, here I remain. (If you are in the Indiana Conference and are looking for others to connect with, reach out to me.)

Jesus might tell you something different than he is telling me. God bless you wherever he leads you.

Let us all pray that God will bless the United Methodist Church. Let us pray for each other. In the words of John Wesley, we have no business on earth except to save souls. That has not and will not change.

*I never liked the word “traditionalist” but was forced into using it by our political conflicts. I know “Wesleyan evangelical” is more clumsy, but it is more accurate to my understanding of my theology. With the traditionalist collapse as a political presence in the UMC, I feel free to revert to my preferred term.